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Friday, September 18, 2009

Finishing Up

This ended up being a week of finishing projects. Both girls have been working on an ABC book for the last few weeks. Lindsey's is a Bible ABC book that we printed from Preschool Post. She's a HUGE fan of David and Goliath (no pun intended). So she was thrilled when she got to her "G" page!

We used the apple we made way back when to decorate the front of her book. The purple thing on the left was supposed to be a butterfly for the "B" page....but she insists it's a bunny with chickenpox... And for the record, that is a doll baby laying on the floor behind her, lest anyone should get any crazy ideas.

Olivia's ABC book has been a bit more involved. Media Angels offered a free download of their Creation Science and Geology ABC booklets some time ago. Olivia's been working on 1 booklet per day (or so), and it ended up being much bulkier than I'd anticipated.

And YES....all of the alphabet are there...you just can see part of it because of the way we did the lapbook. Here are the letters you can't see in the above photo.

We've also completed our study of Delaware. To wrap things up, we used the maps and brochures that were mailed to us to make collages for each girls 50 states notebook. I realize now that I did not photograph this activity, sigh. We also did a state report, listing all the important things like population, square mileage within the state, state symbols, date of statehood etc. We completed a biography report on Vice President Joe Biden. Although halfway through we discovered he was born in Pennsylvania, not Delaware, although he moved there in his early childhood. So no harm, no foul I guess. Both girls completed their Delaware state coloring pages in their United States Coloring Book by Rod and Staff.

Tomorrow we'll be having our official "Delaware meal". On the menu is peppered beef tip roast, broccoli-cauliflower casserole and a peach crisp for dessert. I'm really looking forward to this part of the study.

We also completed lesson 3 in Song School Latin. Olivia is really doing great with this! We're able to have brief conversations in Latin without her needing to stop and think about what I've said, or what her response is to be. I'm very impressed with her progress in this area. Lindsey is still plugging along, although I'm not sure how much of it she's retaining.

I'm finally starting to see some improvement in Lindsey's phonics program. I'm not sure it it's a lack of discipline on her part that has been the problem, or if she just hadn't gotten the concept yet. However this week she started reading blends pretty easily. I'm seriously considering stopping with the Abeka K-4 and moving her to "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". If any of you have first hand experience with this method, please comment below or send me an email. I'd like to get some input.

The leaves have started to change color and fall already. We ended up having an impromptu nature study/art project this week. While I was harvesting flower seeds, Olivia and Lindsey collected colorful leaves and announced they were going to make something. It didn't really matter, what it was, apparently. I pulled the backing off of 2 12X18 packs of construction paper and dumped a pile of glue on top, and the kids made a collage of leaves. They'll be adding some pinecones and other leaves later in the fall to cover up more of the blank areas.

Besides our weekly co-op, we attend a monthly activity day as well. Yesterday was the first meeting of the month. Olivia was happy to have an "art class"...and she gets to wear a smock, so she's thrilled. Lindsey's class does...stuff...typical 3 and 4 year old stuff; crafts, songs etc. I'm teaching a class on Native Americans for 9-12 year olds. I'm hoping to post photos from that class starting next month, but I forgot to ask the parents permission to post photos of their kids, so I left the camera home.

Oh, Olivia's science teacher at co-op is doing a study on butterflies. I was THRILLED to find out that each child gets their own butterfly net and caterpillars. I just stuck them in the net tonight since we were so busy all day. One has already migrated to the top of the net.

Ballet started this week as well. Lindsey's class is only 30 minutes long. Olivia's class is 30 minutes tap and 30 minutes of ballet. She seemed to really enjoy it. Although, going straight from co-op, to ballet, to baseball wore her out. Thankfully, baseball will be over in another week and a half!